Sunday, December 2, 2012

Exuberance of Verbosity:When Indians in Auckland can hardly understand Hindi news on their Indian radio station

When
Indians in Auckland can hardly understand Hindi news on their Indian radio station

British Broadcasting
Corporation, BBC, world’s most prestigious brand, operates under Royal Charter as
a public service broadcaster. Its Charter specifies that the mission of the
Corporation is to "inform, educate and entertain". BBC exists to
serve the public interest and to promote its public purposes: sustaining
citizenship and civil society, promoting education and learning, stimulating
creativity and cultural excellence, representing the UK.

Similar parallel may
apply to national stations in India (All India Radio), New Zealand (Radio New
Zealand), Fiji (Fiji Broadcasting Commission for Indigenous I-Taukei
programmes), and so on. Among other things, these stations are also guardians
of culture and language of original settlers of respective countries.

This role or obligation
however does not apply to Hindi or Indian radio stations in New Zealand. It
therefore came as a surprise to me when listening to certain newsreaders of
Radio Tarana who appear to sit with Hindi-English-Hindi dictionary, and bombastically
translate English news into Hindi that normal mortal Indians find hard to
understand and decipher. The purpose of language is communication, and not to
show linguistic prowess of its editors and sub-editors. [This used to be done
with my understandable articles, when adulterated by one Indian Newspaper
editor, with his officious editing, inserting difficult and hard-to-understand
words).

I can read and write Standard
Hindi and Fiji Hindi and would consider myself above-average in understanding
of Hindi. When listening to Radio Tarana news of certain newsreaders, my
children used to ask,” Papa what language is the announcer speaking in, what
did he say?” My reply “I did not understand with formal Hindi classes to year
9, how can you understand?”

For example, the newsreader
speaks about conflict in Iraq, and would say, so many people died because of a
suicide-bomber, which he will say in Hindi as “ Atm-Ghaati humlaa” without so much as repeating in English so
normal mortal Indians could be educated and understand, especially children struggling
to speak and understand Hindi in New Zealand. Other unusual, never-spoken Hindi
vocabulary normally are used in Hindi news which even I do not understand, full
of verbosity such as: “Prashashnic
kaaryawahi (disciplinary action) “Sacratmak”
(optimism-positive), “Sthayi Sachiu
(permanent secretary), “Raj waadi,
prajatantra” (democracy), Baam Panthi
dal (left wingers –I do not know what they mean, “Vyahan” (car), “Vyahan chalak”
(car driver).

Another, younger news
reader of Radio Tarana, who I expected to be more liberal in use of
understandable Hindi, took the cake. It was good that I had heard the news in
English and understood because I knew the context. He used the word “Saamling”
which no Indian I spoke to understood what it meant. It was reportedly used for
“lesbian”, but I am not sure if that is correct. Another word used by the same
newsreader the other day was “Anubandh”
which I do not still understand and hope some Indian can tell me what it means.

So, is Hindi News in
Radio Tarana about informing and educating or is it to show the Hindi language
skills of the news team that common Indians hardly grasp. Like Latin and Shakespearean
language, it sounds good, but very few understand. While this was brought to
attention of management many years ago, nothing has changed. In fact, it has
gone worse. The general attitude is “Who is this Thakur, telling us our job.” Well, Fiji
Pundit has spoken and many will listen.

I hope Fiji
Pundit will bring some culture change, where once again in our adopted
country, Indians and people of Indian origin are able to understand Hindi news on
an Indian radio station.